Reply to Lane and Ersson, French Politics: The Virtues of Majoritarian Democracy
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Reply to Lane and Ersson, French Politics: The Virtues of Majoritarian Democracy Majoritarianism and Democratic Performance in the Fifth Republic Arend Lijphart Department of Political Science, 0521, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0521, USA E-mail: [email protected]
Contrary to Jan-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson’s claims, the French Fifth Republic is a majoritarian but not extremely majoritarian democracy. Moreover, diachronic and comparable-cases analyses show that its government performance is that of a fairly typical majoritarian system: clearly inferior to that of the average consensus democracy, especially as far as basic elements of democratic quality are concerned. The French case therefore confirms, rather than weakens, the conclusions based on the large-N statistical analyses in my 1999 book ‘‘Patterns of Democracy’’. French Politics (2003) 1, 225–232. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200029 Keywords: comparable-cases analysis; consensus democracy; diachronic analysis; Fifth Republic; majoritarian democracy
I greatly appreciate the honor that Jan-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson confer upon me by selecting me as the main spokesman for the PR-consensus school of thought and — an even greater honour — by juxtaposing me to the eminent Maurice Duverger. They challenge important propositions that I have formulated on the basis of my comparative research, especially those contained in my Patterns of Democracy (Lijphart, 1999). In turn, I should like to challenge their contrary propositions. I am grateful to the editors of French Politics for the opportunity to do so. For the assessment of government performance in democratic systems, the number of cases available for analysis is large enough to permit the application of statistical methods. In my Patterns of Democracy, I have complete data on the institutional characteristics of 36 democracies and performance data on usually at least half of those cases (Lijphart, 1999, 266–267, 278–279). For the federal–unitary dimension of the majoritarian–consensus contrast, which is based on five variables (unitary and centralized vs federal and decentralized government, unicameral vs bicameral parliaments, flexible vs rigid constitutions, the strength of judicial review, and the degree of independence of central
Arend Lijphart Majoritarianism and Democratic Performance in the Fifth Republic
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banks), my analyses show mainly weak or no links with the performance variables.1 However, the pattern is clear and unmistakable for the executives– parties dimension (based on the five variables of one-party majority vs broad coalition governments, executive dominance vs executive–legislative balance of power, two-party vs multiparty systems, majoritarian and disproportional electoral systems vs proportional representation, and pluralist vs corporatist interest group systems): Consensus democracies tend to have slightly better records with regard to macro-economic performance and the control of violence than majoritarian democracies, although the corr
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